Technical Report Reviews & Gap Analysis

Technical Reviews of Oil and Gas Project EIAs, Myanmar

SLP Environmental was part of the technical assistance team awarded the contract to perform the technical reviews of several Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Initial Environmental Examination (IEE) reports submitted to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation (MONREC) in Myanmar. The assignment was instructed under a development programme between Myanmar and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD).

MONREC sought technical assistance from NORAD with the reviews of numerous EIA and IEE reports submitted by project proponents planning offshore and onshore oil and gas exploration activities in Myanmar. The newly established Environmental Conservation Department (ECD) within MONREC is the responsible agency tasked with reviewing, approving or rejecting a project proponents EIA report. ECD management considered that their newly appointed officers did not yet possess the necessary technical expertise or experience to review complex EIA reports prepared for onshore and offshore oil and gas exploration projects.

SLP Environmental in collaboration with our TA team colleagues developed a comprehensive and standardized scoring matrix to evaluate whether each EIA study and report:

Complied with the requirements of the ‘EIA Procedure Law’

Complied with the requirements of the Draft ‘Administration Instruction on EIA Procedure’

Demonstrated that the applicant had adequately justified the proposed IEE categorization for a project (where applicable); and

Adequately considered Good International Industry Practice (GIIP)

The deliverable from each review included an overall conclusion and suggested consent conditions for each applicant (where applicable). For the purposes of transparency the full report review checklist was included in an appendix so that the applicant could clearly identify the rationale for each identified non-conformance. Where non-conformances were identified, outline potential corrective actions were identified.